Category: Thai Food

One of the hottest food fad in Singapore is Thai Boat Mee. Apart from the famous Soi 19 Wanton Mee, there are now many noodle bar/cafe/restaurant selling Thai Boat Noodle at atas prices. Which seem so ridiculous considering that the original Thai noodles are street food meant to be cheap and good.

Fortunately, tucked in an obscure corner of Old Airport Food Centre, there is a little stall that is sticking faithfully to its origin and selling cheap Thai Wanton Mee at a mere $4 per bowl.

The noodle is dished out by a Thai lady. Not too sure whether Foon is her name though. And unlike all the other atas places, she only sells Wanton Mee. There is a sign that said they also sell Ice Blended Coconut although the few times I went, I have not been able to get that as it is always unavailable.

Back to the Wanton Mee. I ate there a few times. Tapao a few times. And it taste great either way.

It not a very big portion but you can upsize up to $6.00 and apparently they have it in dry or soup version. Never tried the latter though. To me wanton mee has to be eaten dried. And with chilli. And their chilli is one of the best around. The stall opens about 9 am and most time it sells out by the early afternoon. Do I need to say more about it?

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I like my Thai Wanton Mee. Unfortunately I don’t go Thailand often enough to eat those there. But luckily there are a number of outlets now in Singapore like the super long queue impersonator Soi 19 at Ang Mo Kio and my favourite little stall at Old Airport Road. Most of them are sited in either a food centre or a coffeeshop and with the long queue, waiting for the noodles is a very hot tiring affair.

So I am happy that there is now a little cafe right smack in the middle of town that serves Thai Boat noodles including the Wanton Mee. And of course the place is air conditioned! Welcome to KinMoo, the smallest little eatery I seen with just a handful of tables. But what it lacks in tables, it make up for in a full size menu. But I was there for the wanton mee only so that what I ordered:

At $7.50 a bowl it is not exactly cheap but hey, for the air con, it is worth it! And it comes with 3 dumpling, 3 slices of finely cut char siew, half an egg and lots of pork lard! M ordered their Tom Yum Noodles

and we also had the Tom Yum soup.

I swear this has got to be one of the best wanton mee I ever tasted. M loves her Tom Yum noodle too. My only complain – not enough. I can easily polish off 1 more bowl – maybe their signature BaaMee Haeng Cha Kang Rao. Next trip then!

There is this place in Bangkok where there is a famous wanton mee outlet. The place as I understand it, is jam packed with tourists and locals. It sells Thai style wanton mee and some other side dishes like pork knuckle, fried wanton and vegetables. The stall name is SabX2 Pratunam Wanton Noodles and it is at Soi Petchburi 19 in Pratunam Bangkok.

Over in Ang Mo Kio in a tiny HDB coffeeshop, there is a stall which sells a mean wanton mee. The queue is so long I swear I almost faint from hunger the one time I was there. This stall sells a version of a Thai style wanton mee and some other side dishes like pork knuckle, fried wanton and vegetables. The stall name is SOI 19 Wanton Mee.

So we have 1 stall at Soi Petchburi 19 and one stall named Soi 19 in 2 different countries. Coincidence or a case of passing off? When I first heard about this stall in Ang Mo Kio, I thought maybe the Thai owner had some sort of franchise and opened up outlets in other countries. That was until a friend posted photos on her FB showing these signs all over the place at the Bangkok outlet.

So now we know this is a blatant case of passing off by name association. Just like there is only one famous prata stall in Jalan Kayu but there are many stalls elsewhere in Singapore proclaiming to be “Jalan Kayu” prata. Or Jalan Tua Kong fishball noodles. Or Katong Laksa. Trying to cash in on the reputation of another more famous stall by associating with its locality is something seen very often here. But these wannabes will soon be caught out if the food doesn’t live out to the standard of the more famous counterpart.

So back to Soi 19 in Ang Mo Kio. Because I have not tried the version in Bangkok, I cannot do a comparison. The group of us ordered these:

Thai Wanton Mee

Dumpling

Pork Trotters

Pork Intestines

But perhaps because we had to wait nearly an hour for it, we gulped down everything in double quick time. Was it good? My buddies didn’t really think it was that great. The only one among us who had tried the Bangkok’s stall also didn’t think very highly of this local copy. So perhaps it is more hype than substance and it was smart to cash in on the Thai’s “connection”.

Can someone who has tried both put a comment here and tell me which is better?

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Went to this little Thai place at Alexandra. It wasn’t as crowded as we feared after reading the reviews in HGW. But maybe it is because we were there around 2 pm. Well after lunch.

We ordered our usual staples of Thai food.

Mango salad. This come comes with lot of mango, peanuts and onion. A bit too spicy for me but M loves it. But then again, she always like this dish everywhere.

Clear tom yum soup. M wasn’t really impressed with it though. I thought the portion could have been bigger but then again it is for 2 so it wasn’t that little.

Olive Rice. It comes with a separate dish of parsley, onion and cashew nuts to mix into the rice. The rice was topped up with fried egg. The portion was too big for the 2 of us but this was the dish that I really enjoyed.

Sambal long beans.

Stuffed chicken wing. Supposed to be their house special. At $2.50 each, it was kinda expensive but man, this is like damn shiok! I could have more than 1 except that I have been over eating for the past few days.

Plus drinks, the total was slightly over $40.00 which was really value for money. This is the place to go for cheap, home cooked Thai food.

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Lots of food to eat during this period contributing to the increase in the waistline. No choice somebody got to sacrific for the sake of not wasting all these food.

Some of the more interesting and memorable ones in the next few posts starting with this set lunch at the Patara Fine Thai Cuisine restaurant at Tanglin Mall. The last time I went to this restaurant was when it still has an outlet at Raffles City which was like a gozillion years ago. Now there is only 1 outlet left and more disappointingly no more dessert buffet.

We ordered the special lobster set lunch promotion which cost $88.00 but paid only $68.00 under an OCBC credit card promotion.

This is a four course meal which comes with this starter comprising a chicken popiah, a fried prawn, a “gold” pouch wanton and a choice of pomelo, papaya or mango salad. I opted for the pomelo salad. The portion was much smaller than I like but it was kinda expected since they have the “Fine” food tagged on to the restaurant name and I have come to associate “Fine” with less.

Next up was the Tom Yam soup. There was a total of 1 prawn, 1 scallop and a few slices of cuttlefish and fish. But it was not too bad although not spicy and sour enough for me

Following that was the main course which comprised a green curry with an option of chicken or beef. I had the beef. The curry was a bit sweet in my opinion.

The main course – olive rice, stir fried vegetable and 1 lobster. The lobster wasn’t that fresh. In fact it was quite hard, the flesh I mean. Maybe because it was stir fried and not steamed? The olive rice was also so so and definitely not up to what I expected from the place. I can get much better food from the many small Thai eateries that is now all over town.

Dessert was a choice of Red Ruby or Mango sticky rice. Since there was 2 of us, we each had one.

The red ruby was not red at all. In fact it was so colourful. A bit sweet but rather satisfying.

Unfortunately, I can’t said the same of the mango sticker rice. It was rather bland. How they got something so simple so wrong I don’t understand.

All in, after tax and service charge, we paid more than $180 for both of us but more than the price, it wasn’t really worth the money. The standard of the food was so so and in fact plain ordinary. The service was good and impeccable of course, as befits a restaurant of its standard but other than that, the money could have been better spent on 4 similar meals at Thai Express and I will dare say without much difference in quality.